Vitro

Seventeen-year-old Sophie Crue wants to reach Skin Island, a remote speck in the Pacific, because her mother, a scientist, left Sophie behind years ago and is working there. Sophie hires a young charter pilot, Jim Julien, to fly her in.

The island hosts research funded in private by Corpus, a mysterious corporation. Its scientists have grown embryos in test tubes and brought them to life. These beings, called the Vitros, have knowledge and abilities that most people can only imagine, and they also carry one serious flaw.

On arrival Sophie learns something she never suspected: she has a Vitro twin named Lux, the result of Corpus's most dangerous work. She is pulled two ways, between a reunion with the mother who betrayed her and the wish to protect a genetically enhanced sister she did not know existed.

Those family questions have to wait. Sophie and Jim soon face what happens when experiments push past safe limits. This is a young adult science fiction adventure set in a tropical jungle, with a tone that is violent and unsettling, and it asks what people owe the lives they create.